Tag Archives: Book Review

His first book Pyromaniac Pookais just as adorable/wrong, but only has ONE story. Gawd. What the actual fuck is that (awesome and adorable) shit? In Two Tales from Manky Valley you get TWO. Holy shitballs. I know Frank, and so he sent me a free e-book for my reviewing pleasure. Usually this would have made me cry from my eyes (No trees died for this? What is wrong with you?) but because it’s illustration heavy it is actually really fun to read on a screen. Maybe I was so used to reading web-comics that it didn’t phase me, or maybe I’m cured of my Ludditeitis. Either way, I can vouch for the readability of the e-book. There is no real blurb (except the little ones I found on the website) so I will instead allow the author to describe himself to you.

Frank Peña is a raggedy old hobo who lives in North Carolina with twenty cats.

If you see a guy in a bathrobe and fuzzy bear-feet slippers dancing to the overhead music inthe produce section of a grocery store, that is probably him.

Approach with candy.

Perhaps that’s actually more informative than a blurb for telling you exactly what you can expect from Manky Valley. It is silly. I’ll talk about each story separately:

Follow The Prettiest Pony and her pals, Butterface and Brownbagger, on an epic adventure into a haunted castle, that results in a chaotic trail of rainbows, cake and charred skeletons all across Manky Valley. (From Becauseinter.net/mankeyvalley.html)

The main themes in this piece appear to be sexist talk of anthropomorphised horses, and death cannons. Largely the themes blend together to create something brightly coloured and vaguely repulsive, both visually and ideologically. Freud says the castle represents a vagina, so I guess bestiality as well, cause they go inside of one of them. LESBIAN bestiality. I mean, my word. The juxtaposition of The Prettiness of the Pony and the castle-shapedness of the vagina confuse our ideas of what is sexual and what is just a castle, or something. Maybe we all want to sleep with our parents, or each other. Maybe we all have genitalia that resembles listed buildings. It is very meaningful.

Learn valuable life lessons about what happens when Li’l Stabby–everyone’s favorite hug-addicted, magically animated butcher knife–is set loose in a forest full of snuggly critters. Can anything stop his cuddly reign of terror? Probably not. (From Becauseinter.net/mankeyvalley.html)

Unlike the gritty realism of the sexy pony story, this tale is overflowing with glittering whimsy.

Having seen the first twenty minutes of Pinocchio, the Plant-Watering Fairy followed standard magical-meddling protocol by rifling through the Lonely Old Lady’s possessions for something to animate.

*sigh*

The kindly aim of a passing fey to ease the suffering of an old woman begins one kitchen implement’s quest to learn more about life and himself. We learn valuable lessons like “Don’t piss on knives, especially if you’re magic!” and “Don’t hug knives, what the fucking hell is the matter with you?” I found myself moved to tears and a little bit of fear by just how carefully Lil’ Stabby’s rampage has been imagined. Freud probably thinks the knife is a penis, I’m pretty sure he says that. This is basically about a magical death orgy, if you’re Freud. Although I guess so is everything, if you’re Freud. So…why WOULDN’T you want to read it? Sort yourself out.

Really though, as far as ridiculous fun and sinister fairy tales go, these are super examples of both. They are also an excellent cautionary tale for loved ones about the dangers of too much caffeine. You could also perhaps point them in the direction of my twitter feed.There are reviews on the site where you can (and surely must) buy it rather than on the e-book I recieved, here they are:

“It’s basically a hate-poem to vaginas…[Frank] is like a modern Jack the Ripper, only with cartoon ponies.”- Reverend CDAAAHApart from the fact that it’s actually prose, nobody died and certainly certainly nobody was disembowelled on the streets of London, this is correct.

“If a psychologist were ever to read this, he would lose his shit.” – Frank’s Mom

I’m in the process of transferring posts from my old blog to here. Actual service will begin when I’ve posted my selection and can start thinking about new ideas. Please excuse broken links or images and my lack of a proper rating sytem.

He…hello? Are you all still there? No. I thought not. Excellent. This means no witnesses to my jolly rusty leap into this blogging business. I had other, grandplans for my old blog which did not come to be. I have formulated a new plan. I have decided to come back with a review of a book the follows one I was very fond of and got very attached to. Its sibling is a different creature and correspondingly it has a different blurb! HURRAH!

A clockwork man is abandoned in Trafalgar Square. A ghost displays a craving for diamonds. An aristocrat returns ten years after being lost at sea and instigates riots in London. The Rakes are indulging in seances. The Technologists are growing giant insects and transforming them into steam-driven vehicles. The British Empire’s capial is in chaos, and in the midst of it all, Sir Richard France Burton and his wayward assistant, Algernon Swinburn, are beginning to suspect that someone, somewhere, is up to no good!

The previous book is referenced from the outset making this more of a sequel than part of a series. I find books that are just interchangeable blocks on a vague timeline less impressive somehow than ones that weave themselves together over a series. We hear of John Hanning Speke, malaria, Africa and the rest. Like the last book too there’s a surreal blend of stuff that actually existed and stuff I’m really glad didn’t. The Tichborne Affair was a vague note somewhere in my head, as were most of the book’s secondary characters. Irritated as I am with Victorian London (apparently) being the place to be, I can’t help but be absorbed by some of its most interesting facets. World history is mentioned more frequently too, with an Ireland apparently over-run by Triffids and Europe being hit by the technologists as London has been. It has all the gorgeous familiarity of history and all the wonderful chaos of flux. It’s as satisfying in this book as it was in the last, but not at all repetitive or formulaic.

Burton is undoubtedly the main dude (or protagonist as I believe some people insist on calling them) but he never appears to have been forced into the plot simply because of that fact and is never determined for the spotlight. This is usually the case with protagonists, and can be either really irritating or really funny, even if it’s done deliberately or well. The balance is rarer. That is I’m rarely not annoyed by a protagonist at least a bit (because everything is always about them, isn’t it?) but Burton isn’t irritating. He’s cold, a little distant and maybe hard to relate to (I suspect why there are so many loveable secondary characters) but he’s not a tit. This fact makes for rewarding reading.

My favourite parts of the last book returned this time around. There were the continued insane (and gross) inventions as Albertian Britain gets to grips with its shiny new Eugenics, The Rakes getting into their amoral japes (the scamps) and real life geniuses getting a bit fucked up. There is also finally the recognition in print that Babbage sounds quite a lot like cabbage, and for this alone the book is worth the cover price. The technology is fucking mental and stops just short of being actually horrific because it’s so cartoonish. Focusing too much on hollowed out animals brings a chap down, you know. Describing the eugenecists folly with cartoonish horror rather than just horrified horror made it clear that this is a morally dubious endeavour but not so clear that you wonder why Burton isn’t dropping everything to ensure that no animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture uh…Albertian caper. There are also zombies. And POSH zombies.

What a Posh Zombie May Look Like

The bad things actually got worse. I distinctly remember reviewing the last book and ranting about a nurse with a gun who was the exotic eye candy for our recently single protagonist. Somehow Michael Madsen got involved. Look I don’t know, okay? I talked of how wonderfully the most downfally downfalls of our hideous imperialism had been smoothed over and changed so that society was just a tiny bit less prejudiced than it had been. However, I said, the women were contributing but treated as decoration. And, I said, this would not do. Ah, said the author, I’m mimicking the ways of the time. Fair enough, said I, but still, you know. And so it was that I addressed the issue of the sexism in the last book. WOULD that I had the content to cry sexism this time around. Would that I could, dear reader, but I cannot. The reason being is that there are a handful of women mentioned in this book in any amount of detail. One of whom is Mrs. Angell, Burton’s housekeepery housekeeper. The second is Florence Nightingale who has been kidnapped and therefore appears as a plot point and only once as a character with dialogue and Miss Mayson, a swan breeder who again is mentioned most often by other characters rather than appearing herself as a character. Madam Blavatsky features prominently later on, though in what capacity I cannot say for fear of spoilers. She is a wonderful character, and I would analyse her further and pick apart interesting morsels of gender related issues but it would be a MASSIVE FUCKING SPOILER. Suffice to say, that despite her being a fine character she does not negate the fact that I spent quite a lot of my time thinking “Does Sir Richard Francis Sexpot Burton even speak to women?” There are some prostitutes, a housekeeper and a nurse. I hate to be the person who bangs on about “what about the women?” I realise it gets dull and wearing and that not everybody cares. However, I only ask where the women are when there are no women. We are fifty percent of the earth’s population and there are about 8 of us in this 400+ page book. What the ACTUAL fuck? Like, really. Actually really, what the fuck?

The cover reviews are the same as last time, and I pretty much agree. Also, it won an award.

I will be transferring select posts from my old blog over to here. Please excuse the monotonous content while I’m doing this. Also excuse the broken links or images and my lack of a proper rating system. I am working on it.

This is another one of those books, like The Vesuvius Club and The End of Mr Y before it, that I chose because the cover art is beautiful. I refuse to allow you to judge me on my superficial methods, because they are both very good books. Ugly books are good too, but I’m just saying one doesn’t preclude the other. Anyway, it’s very steam-punky looking and may be the most steam-punky thing I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. It’s also green and has gold-shiny bits. It had a lot going for it before I even picked it up, is what I’m saying. And then I read the blurb:

It is 1861 and Albertian Britain is in the grip of conflicting forces.

Engineers transform the landscape with bigger, faster, noisier and dirtier technological wonders; Eugenicists develop specialist animals to provide unpaid labour; Libertines oppose restrictive and unjust laws and flood the country with propaganda demanding a society based on beauty and creativity; while The Rakes push the boundaries of human behaviour to the limits with magic, sexuality, drugs and anarchy.

Returning from his failed expedition to find the source of the Nile, explorer, linguist, scholar and swordsman Sir Richard Francis Burton finds himself sucked into the perilous depths of his moral and ethical vacum when the Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, employs him as “King’s Spy.” His first mission: to investigate the sexual assualts committed by a weird apparition known as Spring Heeled Jack; to find out why chimney sweeps are being kidnapped by half-man, half-dog creatures; and to discover the whereabouts of his badly injured former friend, John Hanning Speke

So much blurb! I like that. If it can say all of that without giving a great deal away then the book itself has to be dense enough for me to fall in, get lost and forget where I came from. That’s something I can get on board with. Fortunately I discovered that my first assumption was correct and that I really fucking love this book. For those of you suffering from Teal Deer Syndrome, you can stop there. If you care why I love it, please let’s continue.

Firstly there’s the Libertine Propaganda and other sorts of cultural ephemera like it that begin every chapter. The one in the very first chapter is:

Everything Life Places in Your Path is an Opportunity No Matter How Difficult No Matter How Upsetting No Matter How Impenetrable No Matter How You Judge It An Opportunity

Which is a wonderful idea in itself, but when you are trapped on THE JOURNEY FROM HELL that lasts FOREVER and in which you get stuck in Paris for 7 hours (not as glamorous as it sounds, it was an airport and apparently the French don’t do fast food) and then in a hotel in Detroit overnight (even less glamorous than you could possibly imagine) and then on a bus for 23 hours, it’s an even more wonderful idea. And it was right, in its way. I got to read this beauty twice, pick up some awesome anecdotes and think too much about the opening chapters of books. It helped! Perhaps the trauma of the journey has made me forget that there are things I don’t like and focus on how wonderfully this world was built.

After that WONDEROUS bit of fake-propaganda, Sir Richard Francis Burton’s former best friend kills himself, which is the catalyst for the events in the rest of the book. While investigating the many mysteries that present themselves to him, Burton has run ins with the violent, deranged and anachronistic Spring Heeled Jack. This is explained and made clear(ish) in the last third of the book (time loops and I do not get on). The result being that I regret that the events described did not take place because I want to meet an orangutan with a human brain who is called Mr. Belljar. I never will, of course, and life goes on but some of the invention in this book is surreal, spectacular and a lot of it is very funny.

The things I did like are many and varied, mostly I like the bizarre inventions that make their way into every day life when ideas years before their time are introduced into Victorian/Albertian society. The result being that greyhounds and foul-mouthed parrots take messages to and from houses, the Prime Minister has had more work done than Jackie Stallone and there are giant swans that swoop through the streets of London with passengers in kites on their back. It is so incredibly steampunk that it makes my eyes sad that they can’t see these things for real. Sir Richard Francis Burton is a likeable protagonist but I find myself liking the people who help him along his journey a lot more than I like him. He’s a bit impersonal, but funny and flash and all of the important things you want from a dashing steampunk hero. His sidekick Swinburn is also wonderful and provides the comic relief along with knocking Burton down a peg or two when he wants things done his way, for good or bad. I was also put onto Swinburn’s beautiful poems. I’d never heard of him before this.

The things I didn’t like were mostly a general repeat of my occasional mantra “Victorian London omgWHY”, but that tapered off after a while because that’s precisely what this isn’t. It’s Victorian London on its head. It’s the introduction of chaos, of flux, of absolute uncertainty about whether the things you know should happen, the things that no good Victorian London should be without, will happen. I like that a lot.

The thing I really didn’t like was that a nurse who Burton encounters quite early in the story, Sister Sadhvi Raghavendra, is still presented as the bit of fluff, despite being a bad ass and saving lives, risking her own and all of that. She is of course immediately described the way Flashman would immediately categorise her: “dusky” with “almond eyes” and positively swoons when Burton says he’ll meet her again soon (he is still engaged at this point JUST SO YOU KNOW). Don’t get me wrong, I like that for the most part, people from the colonies aren’t treated as they truly were in this book. I mean if you’re going to write a do-over get rid of the parts that remind us how shit humans can be to one another, but there’s still an element of “ooh, exotic!” that rubs me the wrong way when she is so much more than just a pretty nurse. If you’re going to have people not be racist, lets not be sexist have men force their wives to leave the room when bad language is imminent. Just sayin. Back to the bad-assness of Sadhvi- without being too spoilery, she’s the bait at one point:

“She sat and waited, the tea at her side, a pistol in her hand.”

Know what that reminds me of? It reminds me of Budd in Kill Bill, waiting for The Bride with a shotgun in his lap. Ok, in all probability he was chewin’ baccy, not drinking tea and was not dressed as a flower seller. All that aside, Sadhvi? As bad ass as this guy:
￼

He has a sword. And he works in a strip club. He's exactly like a Victorian Nurse.

And probably much better groomed. My point being, she does not have to be eye candy or a love interest to be a compelling/awesome character. PLEASE FOR TO BE STOPPING THIS KIND OF THINKING. Thx : )

The point I made when I reviewed Drood about dancing dead men about in strings still stands to some extent. I think I glossed over it for a few reasons:

It was something that was not a bus journey of temporal or environmental extremes.

Hodder has a whole section at the back where he says “They really said this, but not this.”

It is not trying for any kind of historic accuracy. See Orangutan above. Drood seemed very real, despite the crazy supernatural goings on, and that made it weirder I think.

There are dozens of “real” (meaning people who once existed) people in this book, some of them saying things they really said and sometimes going off completely because this book is crazy times. I think the sheer volume of them, and the fact that I know they didn’t really meet and that this is all complete fiction that could never possibly have occured makes it a lot less creepy that they’re dead and this book is talking about them doing things they never did. I’m still not completely ok with it, but I may have attached myself to this book in rather an unhealthy way so my opinion may be completely warped. It probably doesn’t matter anyway : )

I love the Libertines and the Rakes. In my head I have to place myself in with the Libertines, they aren’t sinister or evil and I have to love the philosphy. The Rakes really scare me, but they’re so damned cool.

The poacher was just about to turn and take to his heels when an uncomfortable feeling in his neck stopped him. He looked down and his stubbled chin bumped into a wet red blade which projected from his throat. He coughed blood onto it and watched as it slid back into his neck and out of sight.

“My apologies,” said a soft voice from behind.

The poacher died and slid to the loamy earth.

The man who’d killed him sheathed his swordstick. Like all his fellow rakes, he was well-dressed, carried a bagged birdcage in one hand and a rucksack on his back.

Little by little, the Rakes had occupied the shadows under the trees around the field and now there were hundreds of them.

They’re bastards, but that’s one of my favourite images of the book, hundreds of evil posh guys under trees killing poachers and being suave about it.

There are two cover reviews, both by the same man. I’m going to quote the longer of the two, because it unsurprisingly covers more ground.

This is an exhilarating romp through a witty combination of 19th century English fact and fiction. Mark Hodder definitely knows his stuff and has given us steam opera at its finest. In his first novel he shows himself to be as clever and inventive a writer as those who enliven his pages…A great increasingly complex, plot, fine characters and invention that never flags. It gets better and better, offering clues to some of Victorian London’s strangest mysteries. This is the best debut novel I have read in ages. -Michael Moorcock

Yeah… I don’t think there’s anything I disagree with. Apart from the use of the word “romp”, Mr Moorcock and I seem to think along the same lines when it comes to this particular book. Uhm. Yeah.

One of my absolute favourite elements is the seeming insanity of the inventions but just how much sense they seem to make to the people that use them. Spring Heeled Jack’s utter incredulity of the weirdness that surrounds him alongwith Burton’s matter of fact sense of wonder is brilliant. I mean, seen from a similar perspective half the stuff we do is just as strange and unethical, and I think it’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of invention. One of the main messages of the book is that just because you can it doesn’t mean you should. Talking orangutans being the obvious exception.

FULL MARKS, etc etc. I really will come up with a new rating system, you just watch.